


Lashes from Ashes, Dust to Lust

by feldman



Category: Addams Family (1991)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:33:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now her black moire slippers toed the same abyss as his austerity brogues, sidled up close so the heat of her skin bled across layers of cloth and night between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lashes from Ashes, Dust to Lust

**Author's Note:**

> Because I've been pondering this scene from the movie for years:  
> “GOMEZ: You were so beautiful -- pale, and mysterious. No one even  
> looked at the corpse.
> 
> MORTICIA: Your cousin, Balthazar. You were still a suspect. I couldn't  
> stop staring at you, all during the eulogy. Your eyes. Your  
> moustache. Your laugh.”

The Addamses had a long family tradition of shoddy legal representation stretching back to Giles Corey Addams, who had consulted a real estate attorney instead of criminal counsel when accused of witchcraft. By refusing to enter a plea even while being pressed to death under tonnage, he died with his last will and testament intact, allowing his widow to inherit the land and household unmolested by the court.

Unlike Giles, Gomez did intend to enter a plea against the impending charges dangling like a sword above his head. The remaining question being whether he was going to open his throat wide to swallow a guilty plea, or stare back at the blade, inculpable and defiant.

While inspectors crawled the grounds, and the house bloated and buzzed with every Addams and distaff Frump but the brother he missed like an empty socket aching for a tooth, Gomez brooded over his plea. Shall he swing for Balthazar's murder while he damned himself for driving Fester to his death? Or shall he fall on the truth and explain that, while it had been his axe, it had not been his hand that so fiendishly dispatched and detached his cousin's head, heart and balls?

Gomez pulled a last breath through the cigarillo, ember flaring in the dusk, and stubbed it out against the raw edge of turf before toeing it into the waiting grave. It was really the cojones that were hardest to explain.

Still, they gathered in the summer evening air to fondly remember Balthazar Addams and bury what they'd recovered so far.

For a sprawling clan with genealogy as creative as its accounting, family events were often riotous affairs of joy, playful aggression, jealousy, pride, delightful disgust and sexual tension. To be an Addams, or to affiliate with them, was less about genes than about brutal honesty, a certain moral flexibility, the practical application of familial love, and a stubborn unwillingness to admit defeat even in the face of death.

To keep from completely annihilating one another, they had honed a set of almost alchemical survival skills that served to transmute strife into love, tragedy into connection. Occasionally, more blood was spilled than could be licked off or scuffed into the dust, but this time the family had closed ranks around Gomez.

According to his mother, they saw this incident with Balthazar as a sign that he was finally coming into his own, firmly settling childish rivalries with cousins and embracing a proper manhood now that he was, ten years after Fester's disappearance, of age to take on the mantle of heir.

Despite this, the scrutiny of detectives looked to break his streak of getting lucky at funerals.

Having failed at brotherly philia he now faced a daunting test of agape, to step into the role the family offered, to care for his corner of the clan as it had cared for him. He must shackle his impulses, bind his inattention, mercilessly crucify his weaknesses lest he squander what had been built over generations, lest he lop off another part of the family by continuing with the blind mumbledypeg that had been his adolescence.

He could no longer afford to cater to the feverish itch in his soul that no cruelty or conquest could satisfy. He would have eagerly wrapped his palms around the splintery ash handle and buried his axe in Balthazar's brain if he'd thought it would have soothed that itch, but he'd come to believe such satisfaction did not exist.

The itch was fear, and unbefitting an Addams.

It was tempting to offer his neck for the rope, to embrace failure sooner rather than later, but he would not give in to cowardice. His insecurity had driven Fester away, but he would conquer it at last to keep that sacrifice from being in vain.

Also, if he pled guilty the inspectors would want to know where Balthazar's testicles had got to, and that...he did not know.

Organ music thrummed out of the house like a pulse from a heart, the occasional carnival flourish in the dirge threading life through the celebration of death.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

By all rights she should have startled him, her sashay silent and the moonlight casting her shadow behind her, but her manner was deft and her voice damp velvet.

Balthazar had introduced him to Morticia Frump right before he went missing, and Gomez had despaired of ever deepening the acquaintance once pieces of his erstwhile most eligible cousin began turning up in the punchbowl. But the Frumps remained eager to weave back into the fold, and had stayed to condole and grieve and evade questioning as true Addamses. It was said that despite having only come out into society this last Beltaine, Morticia had handled tea with the inspectors with such aplomb and delicate application of laudenum that there was no need to resort to the castor bean petit fours.

Now her black moire slippers toed the same abyss as his austerity brogues, sidled up close so the heat of her skin bled across layers of cloth and night between them.

Gomez was accustomed to offering gallant notions as easily as kissing a hand or pouring a nightcap. “I was contemplating the mysteries revealed to me by la luna, now suddenly eclipsed by your beauty.” He took the business of being delightful quite seriously, despite his waning gratification in the resulting simpers and titters.

This woman, barely a woman with curves yet half-budded, floored him with the barest tilt of an eyebrow. “You can do better than that, I suspect.” The tip of her parasol slithered his trouser leg up the back of his calf. “Unlike your cousin, I hear you're quick on your feet.”

The point pressed behind his knee and he shifted his weight to keep balance at the edge, breathing, “That I am.”

She turned to face him, opening her parasol over her shoulder so that a sharp shadow fell across the gothic architecture of cheekbone and nose. “I find myself hoping so, Mr. Addams.”

“Call me Gomez.” It came out like a galvanic twitch, and in response she offered him a thoughtful moue.

“Do we know each other well enough for such intimacies? Using first names and giving each other commands?”

The only thing that kept him from dropping to his knees for forgiveness was the glint of her smile and the treacherous footing graveside now that the dew had set. “You may command me, at your pleasure.”

She let the moment ripen silently, and for a moment he wondered if he'd lost his touch in all this mess. Then he realized with a mounting thrill that what should have been a mere gallantry was in fact true. And what was more, she saw it in his face. “Then you may call me Morticia.”

“And yet the pleasure is all mine, Morticia.”

The flutter of her eyelashes against marble pale cheeks failed to hide the intent gaze travelling up and down his frame, leaving a sheen of sweat in its wake as if his bespoke pinstripe had turned to fog. “Perhaps.”

Her hand floated up between them like a moth, and he kissed it as slowly. Warm silk against his lip, with a lingering scent of rosewater and rue.

She murmured down at him, “Softer than it looks.”

He smirked.

“Pending the outcome of certain legal entanglements, I would be honored if you would visit us this summer.”

“C'est le pied! I shall tell maman--” She caught herself, splotches of blush instantly livid on her cheeks as she snapped her parasol closed and settled back into refinement as if unruffling her wings. “I mean to say, your mother is a dear friend of my maman, and has already offered an invitation. They look forward to renewing their friendship over the summer.”

Dios mio, he ached to ruffle her again. “Did you say it was 'the foot'?”

“A quaint idiom. It means something is great.” The dregs of blood retreated slowly from her complexion, as if reluctant to go. “You put me in mind of another French saying; literally, 'to put a rope around one's neck'.”

And it had been going so well. He looked out across the statuary rising up from the peat, el campo santo, the soil pregnant with the dust of lives lived and cut short. “You refer to the blade of my axe, sticky with the blood of mi primo, Balthazar.”

She tenderly adjusted her grip on the handle of her parasol. “Let us lay your axe aside for the moment.”

That such a delicate pronouncement could sound so utterly filthy. “You tease me.”

She agreed with a smile. The thrum from the house began a crescendo of minor chord progressions. “In this other saying, the rope around the neck refers to matrimony. What do you think of that?”

He stepped back from the grave, circling around her. “It would depend on the knot; a noose and a leash offer very different fates.”

“I have always thought they differed only in speed.” She glided over the turf, circling him widdershins in turn, tentacled hem fluttering like moths. “To tame a magnificent predator is to strangle it slowly.”

“A magnificent end, I agree.” Exquisite anguish, that she admired him for the one sin he hadn't committed. “Quien espera, desespera.” He swallowed, fists clenching. Where there is hope, there is desperation. He would become a beast for her, on her leash or off. “But is a lion any less of a killer for taking meat from a loving hand?”

“More to the point, mon sauvage, is a lioness less of a killer for having a splinter removed from her paw?”

The organ went silent and he whispered fiercely, “Never.”

Her eyes were obsidian, black volcanic glass reflecting the changing moonlight as gauzy clouds drifted across the night. She raised her other hand for him, this time palm up. Her head and heart lines were obscured by a swollen red wheal studded with blonde splinters of ash.

Their laughter echoed, playing between the chords breathing out into the night from the house.


End file.
